


An heni a vez e grass ar merc'hed

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M, Jewish Mulder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-01-29 06:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12624813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: Mulder, recruited for the German Army, is injured in Brittany and gets caught up in the lives of the Scully Women, living at the White Whale Inn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: WWII AU  
> A/N: Taking a leap here. WWII AU, PG-13, wartime trauma and injuries, mentions of Nazis. French puns. Names changed to reflect the time and place. The Syndicate are Nazi-adjacent but working for a different new world order.  
> Title is from a Breton proverb, but I just used the part that means “he who has the grace of women”.   
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

The uniform protected him. That was what his father had told him, more than a year ago, as he and his parents had stood in their kitchen. Sanne was somewhere else, in her room or with her friends, enjoying the last days before she went to stay with their grandparents. 

"Put it on, Rayner," his father said as Mulder weighed the cloth in his hands. The dense wool felt ominously heavy.

"A German uniform?" Mulder had asked. "Vati, we're Jewish. German soldiers haven't been kind to those like us."

"I know," his father had said, weariness in his voice. His mother had turned away, blowing the smoke from her cigarette out the open window. The day had been lovely, the sun bright and the breeze cool. Not the kind of day that should have changed his life, and yet.

"I won't do it," Mulder had said, squaring his shoulders. 

"They will take your sister away if you don't," his father had said. "They will not let her leave. They won't let any of us leave."

"We should never have left Amsterdam," his mother had said.

His father had sighed; the sound was well-worn. "That may be so. But we have lived here ten years now, and the work has been good."

"You've worked only toward your own destruction," his mother had said, stubbing out the end of her cigarette on a saucer. Ashes had fallen on the table and she hadn't noticed. She was already gone, the door swinging shut behind her.

"My colleagues have gotten you a commission," his father had said. Something in his eyes had begged Mulder to understand. 

"And if I don't?" Mulder had asked.

"I don't know," his father had said. "You're a man of the right age, or the wrong one. There may be no other options." His father had looked old, very suddenly. "I pray that you are able to make different choices than the ones I made, but I fear there is no choice now."

They would come for him, he had understood. They would come for all of them, and this was the only chance to save them, to put on the hated costume and pretend to be someone he was not. It was better that he took the opportunity that his father's superiors had offered, on the strength of his father's work. Perhaps they did not know that the Mulders were Jewish. They had not put a menorah in the window for years; it would only have illuminated the stormclouds gathering. Perhaps his father's religion had never come up, doing the work that they did, whatever it was. Mulder had not asked what his father did at work in many years; the fatigue in his father's eyes had warned him away as soon as he was old enough to see it. The same fatigue was there as they faced each other across the kitchen table. 

He had reached out and taken the uniform.

It fit perfectly. That didn't make things any better. None of his family could look him in the eye as he marched away to meet his fate. His shoulders were not broad enough to carry them all, he thought. Perhaps they never had been, despite the joys of his youth. He wondered when the pride in their eyes had faded. He had been lost in his studies for so many years, and in caring for Sanne when the work took their parents away, which had been more and more often. And now he was going out on the same errand, the mission his father had always had faith in: to remake the world in a better image, although not the one the Germans had in mind. He had glanced back and they had all been in the doorway: his mother with her hands resting on his sister's shoulders, his father with his arms hanging limp at his sides, defeated. 

He got a letter, later, from his mother. His father's colleagues had taken Sanne away anyway, insurance for his father's compliance, insurance for his mother's silence. They had said they would keep her safe, somewhere out of the way of the war. His mother would never stoop to beg, but he could read her pain in the tense strokes of her writing. Be a dutiful son. Be a dutiful soldier. Stay alive. Come home whole, holding Sanne by the hand. Whatever world they found themselves in after the war, what mattered was that they would be together.

The army hadn't been the nightmare he imagined. For the most part, it was a job like any other. He did as he was told, and cherished the fact that he had never been ordered yet to do something that he could not fathom. The uniform protected him. It kept out the damp wind's chill. It might, for all he knew, deflect a French bullet - at least none had fired at him yet, though he was alone on the road. It had let him pass unscathed through the German lines, his truth hidden under the layers of fabric. 

His superiors had proclaimed him too intelligent (or too sensitive) for the front lines. It was a nice excuse for the fact that he was a poor soldier: bad at following orders, bad at staying in line, bad at displaying the proper reverence for the Reich. Instead, they sent him out as an advance guard, a reconnaissance force. He wasn't a spy, exactly, but he wasn't entirely a soldier either, despite the pistol at his side and the sharp woolen creases of his uniforms. He worked alone, most of the time, although every now and again he was expected to give orders. His officer's insignia gleamed at his breast. The men deferred to him. He didn't work very hard to unravel the truths of the Allies' positions, but he did seem to have a gift for it. He could look at a coded message or a collection of points on a map and discern the pattern without much effort, solving riddles that it took others weeks to tease apart.

So he was here, in the northwest of France, puttering slowly along on his motorcycle, scanning the countryside. He was officially assigned to ensure that the maps matched the terrain. Other places, the landscape had changed: bombs or trenches or traps had been laid along the roads or sliced through the fields. One day, the Germans would move in force on this place too, and when they did, they would need accurate maps. He had a bound book of them in his bag, stolen from a library by someone else, along with a box of colored pencils. He was, again, grateful that he was not being asked for any more than that, and angry at himself for being grateful, and furious at his father for giving him the uniform. 

He had passed already through the Forest of Broceliande, an eerie place where he had stayed in inns whose public rooms served mostly men with wounds that still pained them and abandoned cottages, their small gardens overgrown, their inhabitants presumably lost to the wars. He no longer bothered to change his uniform before he went into a village - as a man of military age, he was given away before he even spoke his accented French. So far, the worst response he had gotten was a quivering lip and a glare that might have withered him. He made certain that he paid well for things. He had wanted to tell them that he, too, was occupied territory, under siege, hiding from his own choices, but he deserved no sympathy. He wore the uniform. 

The Breton sky was embroidered at the edges with heathered hills. Clouds scudded inland as he puttered westward. He had gas enough for his moto, and the wind was dulled from cutting to refreshing by the wool of his jacket. He seemed alone on the road, possibly in the world. He could forget, in moments like these, what the uniform meant, what it had made him. He couldn't forget what was happening, but he could misplace himself in the machine of war. He could imagine that he was reading about it from a distance, struck by the horrors but not a part of them. 

The uniform protected him until it didn't. He wasn't even certain what was happening: a shout, a cracking noise, a thudding impact against his leg, a commotion of bodies dimly glimpsed in the scrub, and a sudden bloom of agony. His bike teetered, tipped, skidded on its side across the road. He disentangled himself from it and tried to stand. His legs wouldn't hold him. He fell, as if in a dream, gazing down at the tatters of his pants. The cloth was red. It hadn't been red before. No. He was bleeding. He was bleeding very badly, very quickly. 

He lay in the road, the moto still puttering in the dirt. He contemplated the sky above him. The clouds had cleared and he felt as if he were falling into the blue of it, untethered from the weight of his body and of his guilt. At least it was a lovely place to die, the hills with their scrub like no other place he'd ever been. A land with wild magic. King Arthur's land, he'd heard, where Merlin was imprisoned and Morgana played her tricks. It felt possible, some crackle of the infinite in the air, but perhaps that dizziness came from the blood loss. He was vaguely aware of scuffling, shuffling, high panicked voices, and then he was lifted toward the sky. He raised his hand to brush his fingers against the blue. 

He came to on something hard and flat; pain seared through his body, centered in his thigh. Blurs above him resolved into a saucepan, a braid of garlic, a bunch of herbs hung to dry.

"Hold still," said a voice, and he rolled his eyes toward his leg, caught a glimpse of red hair and a profile cut from marble. She looked at him and her eyes were the blue of the sky; he was caught up in the endlessness of them. 

"Who are you?" he asked, but she did something to his leg and blackness took him. 

He woke up again in a bed. She was watching him, mending something. He hoped it wasn't the same needle she'd used on his leg.

"You're awake?" she asked in French, her accent throaty.

"I'm awake," he confirmed. "Where am I?"

"You're a guest of the White Whale of Châteauneuf-du-Faou," she told him. "You had a little accident, it seems. Some local boys out hunting for their families mistook you for a wolf at the door. They brought you to my inn when they realized there would be no bounty for your hide." 

He wanted to laugh at her joke, but the edge in her voice told him she wouldn't appreciate that. He knew he was dressed as a Nazi. He knew she knew what the Nazis wanted to do to her country. The master race had little place for redheads, however blue their eyes. 

"I'm no wolf," he said. Her expression didn't change. Whatever she thought of him was sealed behind the ice of her eyes. "My name is Rayner."

"Reynard?" she asked wearily. "The Fox?"

"Rayner," he corrected. "Not a fox. Not a wolf. Captain Rayner Mulder."

"And what are you doing in our little town, Monsieur Capitain?" she asked.

He indicated the bandage on his leg. "I think that should be evident. I gather you're the one who stopped the bleeding and stitched me up."

Her blue eyes were unamused. "You are welcome," she told him in a dry voice. "I also dug the gravel out of your thigh, and bandaged the burns you got from your moto. But why you remain here does not explain why you came here."

"I was sent to discover whether the ports of Bretagne are as vulnerable as the Fuhrer would like them to be," he told her. He saw no reason to lie. She might have killed him already as he lay bleeding on her kitchen table. 

"For the Germans?" she asked with disdain.

"It seems that way," he said. She did not need to know the sordid history of his family, or how his father had pulled strings to secure him a German uniform, and a German passport to replace his Dutch one. She did not need to know that he took it only to spare his mother the pain of losing both her children. She did not need to know that he cursed himself daily for a coward, despite it all. 

"Thank you," he told her. "You could have let me die."

She turned away. "There are still a few people who remember the world they dreamed of living in," she said quietly. "I might have let you die, but then the dream would slip even further away. I studied medicine once, for a little while. I am glad when I can put it to use. There is enough harm done these days without my help."

He wondered how a woman who sat through lectures on the various maladies of the human body and dismembered cadavers had come to be running an inn in a small town. Perhaps they both had stories that would not be retold until after the war. She turned back to look at him, as if she had caught his thoughts, and her eyes narrowed only slightly as she studied him.

"I will call you Reynard," she said at last. "Not a wolf, but perhaps a fox. My name is Dana. The shot lodged in your leg and nicked your artery. In addition, your muscle is damaged. You will need weeks to recover, if not longer."

"I can pay you for my lodging," he said. 

She nodded. "I appreciate that. We have few guests these days." She rose, tucking the needle into her mending. "My mother or my sister will look in on you later."

"Thank you," he said.

She tilted her head and left. He let himself sink deeper into the pillow. It smelled of salt and lavender. His leg throbbed, but the ache soothed him somehow, draining some deeper reserve of hurt inside of him. He fell asleep to the lullaby of his pain.


	2. Chapter 2

Dana's sister Maelice woke him at some point, spooned broth into his mouth, and left him again. The next time he woke it was Dana's hands on his shoulders, helping him find the edge of the bed so that he could relieve himself into a chamber pot. He was disoriented and ashamed, but grateful. He lay in the bed and watched the sun slip through the window, the stars spin by. Maelice or Dana's mother Marguerite or a dark-haired woman named Monique came by at regular intervals with broth and bread. It was almost always Dana who cared for his bodily needs. She bathed him, her eyes dispassionate and her hands steady as she undressed him and tended his wounds. She wasn't embarrassed by helping him find his way to the toilet or by the proximity of the worst of the wound to his genitals. Her disinterest soothed him. When he was her patient, he was not her enemy.

After a few days, she brought him clothing, helping him dress himself. His arms were fine, if a little weak, but his legs moved stiffly. She eased him into the trousers as he buttoned the shirt. The clothes were a little big on him. He wondered where she had gotten them. He hadn't met any men yet in the White Whale. Of course, he hadn't ventured out of the room. He looked up at her.

"They belong to my brother," she said. "Your uniform has proved difficult to wash, and even more difficult to mend."

"That's fine," he said, and knew it was not what others would have said. She limited her curiosity to a flick of her eyes across his face, and then bent to wedge her shoulder under his arm and help him up. He swayed, leaning on her for support, and managed to take a step or two. After one circuit around the room, he was breathing heavily. She helped him back to the bed.

"Tomorrow, you will do more," she told him. "And even more the day after that. Your strength will return."

"Do you have any books?" he asked. "Anything I could read? Or anything I could help with?"

She inclined her head. "I will bring you something to read."

"Thank you," he said.

For a week, she helped him pace the limits of the room. He huffed and puffed a little less each day, and sat up in bed afterward, reading. She had brought him a collection of fairy tales, a French translation of Moby Dick, and Les Misérables. He started with the fairy tales, and spent his days in magical forests not far removed from the one he had passed through. On the eighth day, he woke groggy. Marguerite brought him broth, and he sipped at it obediently, but he could barely raise his head to meet the spoon. She frowned and touched his forehead with cool fingertips. 

"You have a fever," she said.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"I'll find Dana," she told him. She left the broth on the table beside his bed; he tried to reach for it, knowing he ought to eat it, but he knocked it over instead, his limited strength failing. Dana came into the room and looked at him. She touched his forehead in unknowing imitation of her mother's gesture.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, stripping the blankets away from him. He shivered.

"Not well," he said, because to say he was fine would be too blatant a lie. She undid his trousers and pulled them off gently. 

"Your leg is infected," she said. 

"Oh," he mumbled. "I didn't know."

"Does it hurt?" she asked, doing something with the bandages that he didn't want to watch. The air stung against the wound he'd thought was healing. 

"I'm not sure," he told her. 

"There must be some fragment still in the wound," she said. 

"What will you do?" he asked.

"What I must," she said, her voice firm.

He remembered it later as a fog, through which he could dimly perceive Dana's voice. He remembered the bitterness of the teas he was given to sip, the saltiness of the broths. He remembered the women murmuring in a dialect he couldn't understand, the Breton words harsher than the smoothness of French. He remembered a slicing, stabbing pain, and Dana's satisfied voice saying, "Ah, there it is." He drifted for a long time, through light and dark, through pain and the easing of it, and then one morning he opened his eyes and Maelice was there. She squeezed his hand.

"You're back with us," she said. "I'm glad."

"Me too," he rasped, his mouth dry. 

"I was afraid you would wander too far," she said, offering him tea. He raised his head and managed a few swallows. It soothed his throat.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Your leg was infected," she told him. "Dana said that part of the bullet was still in your leg. It contaminated your blood. You might have died." 

"Tell her thank you," he said, coughing a little. Maelice held the cup so that he could drink more of the tea.

"You should tell her yourself," she said, smiling.

"I will," Mulder told her, and he did, when Dana came in to check his bandages.

"Thank you," he said. "Maelice says I nearly died."

She pursed her lips. "Maelice has a flair for the dramatic, but you were very ill."

"And now?" he asked. 

"You should live," she said, leveling a pointed look at him, a look that said he should not make her regret saving his life a second time. "You were lucky. We have very little access to medication. I had to make do." 

"Thank you," he told her again. "I will make myself useful one of these days."

"I will not hold my breath for that, Monsieur Reynard," she said, but he thought there was a spark of humor in her eyes. "Now rest. The next days will be like your first days, and then we will begin again."

He settled back down onto the lavender-scented pillow. "Will I walk soon?"

"That depends on how diligently you try," she told him. "And whether or not you survive Maelice's herbal remedies."

She was right. He had to begin again. His leg had gotten weaker. He shuffled around the room braced against Dana's surprising strength. Once in a while, Maelice would come instead. She was taller, which was more comfortable, but she swayed if he leaned too heavily on her. Twice, it was Monique, who was steadier than Maelice but just tall enough to make him strain a little to straighten himself. He liked it best when Dana came, despite the lines of disapproval around her mouth, or perhaps because of them. The others were kind to him, but Dana's trust was less easily won, and more precious because of it.

"How long have I been here?" he asked her one day as he made his fifth round of the room, limping only a little. The muscle of his leg was strong enough to hold him up now, but it gave out suddenly, and he was never balanced quite right. It made his treks to the toilet very interesting. More than once, Dana had had to help him back to the room. At least he could bathe himself now, given a bowl of hot water and a sliver of soap.

"Nearly a month," Dana told him. She eased out from under his arm and made him take a few steps on his own. "We'll have to find you a cane." 

"A cane?" he said. One of his father's colleagues had always used a cane. It had seemed affected, the same way his constant smoking seemed to be a shorthand for concealing some shadowy purpose.

"You'll need one for a while if you're to be of any use," she said. "Or don't you remember saying you wanted to help?"

"I remember," he said, walking to the window and leaning on the sill for a moment. "Will I be allowed out of this room for some reason beyond using the toilet?"

"You're not a prisoner," she said, looking at him steadily. "If anything, we are at your mercy."

"I swear that you're not," he said. 

"I would like to believe that," she told him, crossing her arms. "But circumstances say otherwise."

"I would die before I endangered any of you," he said.

"Hmm," she said. "It's no wonder that you and Maelice understand each other so well. It's a pity the theater won't have any productions this year, although perhaps we could write our own little drama for the inn." 

"I will prove it," he said. "I swear it. I will let no harm come to you."

"I'm not sure your fever is quite gone," she said, and nudged him back toward the bed. "Rest. I'll return later."

She brought the promised cane when she returned, and leaned it against the foot of the bed. He got up when she had gone and circled the room, testing the feel of it in his hand. It did help. He felt stronger and sturdier, even when his leg began to ache and weaken. He fell asleep with his hand still resting on the arch of the cane.


	3. Chapter 3

In the morning, Dana woke him, but did not bring any food. Instead she prodded his foot. "Up," she said. "From now on, if you want to eat, you will have to walk to the dining room."

He pushed himself out of bed and grasped the cane firmly. She watched him walk, nodding her head. 

"Progress," she said. "Follow me."

They emerged from the neat hallway into a large open room with tables and a bar. A little girl emerged from what Mulder imagined must be the kitchen and flung herself at Dana. She caught the little girl and swung her up to rest on her hip. The child rested her head on Dana's shoulder and peered shyly at Rayner. The halo of rose-gold curls and something about the eyes reminded him of Dana. 

"My daughter," she said, dropping a kiss on the child's head. "Émilie. Émilie, this is Capitain Mulder."

"Your daughter," he repeated, glancing at her ringless left hand.

She shrugged, bouncing Émilie gently back and forth. "Many things are forgiven in a time of war," she said. "Her father is away fighting. We have not forgotten the Great War, Monsieur Capitaine. We have not forgotten how few we were afterward."

"Maman," said Émilie, "Monsieur Capitain doesn't talk properly."

"Hush," Dana said, but she was smiling faintly. "Monsieur Capitain is not from Bretagne."

"Is he one of the bad men?" Émilie asked.

Dana glanced at him. "That remains to be seen." She set her daughter down. "Go and play, my little mouse."

"Are there many bad men around here?" Mulder asked when the girl had scampered off.

"Enough that your presence is no surprise," Dana said. "There is some thought among the Bretons that Monsieur Hitler and Maréchal Pétain would be more supportive of a free Bretagne than Générale DeGaulle. Vichy and the Germans have sent recruiters before. Until now, our village had been overlooked." 

"That's not why I'm here," he told her.

She shrugged. "That too remains to be seen."

He hesitated. "I promise you my intentions are not harmful."

"Many have made that promise before," she said, her eyes distant. "Rarely have they kept it."

He leaned on the cane, frustrated. He wanted to tell her he wasn't a believer, wasn't a true Nazi, wasn't here to subdue or command. But she had no reason to believe him. 

"I'm a terrible soldier," he said instead. "I think they wanted me out of the way. I'm no danger to you."

"Not at the moment," she said, "for we could certainly outrun you." There was a twinkle of humor in her eyes.

He snorted. "Outrun me, outshoot me, outfox me. I have no doubt you're capable of all of that."

"Surely not, Monsieur Reynard," she said. "Outfox the fox?"

"I fear I'd walk right into a trap," he said, leaving out the part where he already had, at his father's asking.

"I hope not, for all our sakes," she said. "Practice your walking. I have work to do."

He limped his way around the inn. There were a few other rooms on the ground floor aside from his, all empty. He didn't risk the stairs. A trapdoor in the kitchen floor seemed to lead to a cellar, whether for storing root vegetables or wine, he didn't know, and couldn't investigate. Monique, Maelice, and Marguerite were all doing chores, from laundry to dishes, and they all exclaimed at how well he was walking. He felt absurdly pleased by their praise, but by the time he made his way back to the dining room, he was exhausted. He sat by the unlit fireplace rubbing his knee, since his thigh was still too tender to touch. A few old men came in as the late afternoon light painted the floor gold. Monique greeted them all by name and served up rounds of something that looked like sunlight in a glass. 

"Chouchen," she said, bringing him his own. "It's like mead." 

He tasted it: the liquor was sweet and slightly herbal, edged with salt. 

"Our own special brew," said Monique. "A Scully family recipe, or so they tell me."

"You're not related to them?" Mulder asked. "I thought you were a cousin."

Monique laughed. "No, Dana rescued me one night in a bar in Paris. When she left, I came with her. Things are less complicated here."

"That sounds like a story," he said.

"Oh, and it was," Monique assured him. "One day, I'll tell you all about it."

"Not today?" he asked.

"No," she said fondly. "You haven't earned it yet." She patted his shoulder. "Drink your chouchen."

He sipped at the liquor, listened to the old men with their thick, nearly-incomprehensible accents. Their French was peppered with Breton, or their Breton was leavened with French: he couldn't tell.

Monique brought him a galette, the buckwheat crepe folded around mushrooms and cheese and still steaming faintly. 

"Enjoy," she said. "Soon enough you'll be well enough to be pressed into service around here."

"I volunteer gladly," he said. "I've had enough of being conscripted."

"Hmm," she said, but she didn't voice the question in her eyes. 

"Do you think I'm a danger to you?" he asked, cutting into the savory crepe.

"Not entirely," Monique said. "I could surely outrun you at this point, and likely outshoot you."

He gestured at her with his fork. "I agree." 

"None of us would shelter you if we were afraid of you," Monique said. "Remember that, and don't give us any reason to mistrust you."

"I swear to you," he said, setting his silverware down on the table and pressing his hand to his heart. "I would do nothing to endanger any of you."

"Hmm," she said again. "That may not be in your control. Whatever your personal allegiances, we have to assume you have powerful friends."

"No one will look for me," he said, with just a touch of bitterness.

"People may surprise you," Monique said. "We take nothing for granted these days. Eat. Grow strong. We could use another set of hands, with le père et les fils all at sea." She shook her head fondly. "I swear the sea is in the Scully blood."

"Strange to find the family so far inland, no?" Mulder said, slicing off another bite of galette. 

"The inn was inherited from the mother's side," Monique said with a shrug. "After the first war, they thought they might find peace here." She lowered her voice so they would not be overheard by the men. "It used to be the Triskèle, but that became too loaded a symbol. The Scullys are Bretons, certainly, but they do not put their region above their republic. They do not agree with what the nationalists have done in order to gain a little liberty. They do not believe the Nazis or Vichy will keep their promises."

"They shouldn't," Mulder muttered, though he wasn’t entirely certain what she was talking about. "So. The Triskèle became the White Whale?"

"A little joke," Monique told him. "They love their Melville, this family."

He thought of the worn copy of Moby Dick that lay beside his bed. "I see."

"I haven't figured out whether it's the sea or the hearth, their whale," Monique said, wiping crumbs off the table. "Two unreachable goals, you see. They feel the pull of the other wherever they are, even though the town is far enough up the river that the tide doesn't reach." 

"I think I understand," Mulder said. 

Monique nodded. "Finish eating. Enjoy your last days of lazing about." She winked. 

He ate his galette slowly, savoring it after weeks of mostly broth, and drank his chouchen. One glass was enough to make him feel a little unsteady, so he sat, rubbing his knee, until he felt stable enough to hobble back to his room. He sat on the bed, his legs stretched out, and flipped through the pages of Moby Dick. After a while, there was a knock on the door, and Dana stepped in.

"Monique told me you did well today," Dana said, her arms crossed but her expression kind. "She said you're healthy enough to start helping out."

"I would like that," Mulder said. "I know I'm a burden on you."

She didn't disagree. "You can start in the kitchen tomorrow," she told him. "You ought to be able to scrub dishes, at least."

"Thank you," he said. "You've all done much more than you had to."

"Should we have let you die on the road?" she asked. "Or worse, in my kitchen?" She shook her head. "Just make sure that we don't regret the things we've done."

"I promise," he said. "I swear it."

"You know," she said, "I might almost believe you."

He smiled. "We're making progress, then."

"Perhaps," she said. "But so is the war."

"No one will come for me," he assured her. 

"I would like to believe that," she said.

"I wouldn't let anyone harm you," he said. "Any of you. Or this place."

"I would like to believe that too." Her eyes were very blue in the dim of his room, the inscrutable blue of the sea. 

"I'll prove it to you," he said, desperation zinging along his nerve endings, so that his leg ached again. 

"I will give you the chance," she said. "But I do not think we have the choice." She turned to leave the room. "Enjoy the books, Capitaine Reynard. I hope that what you say is true, that you are not a fox among the hens."

"I hope not as well," he said after she had closed the door behind her. Surely he didn't matter, one mediocre soldier among thousands. Surely his parents would mourn his loss and move on. The machinery of the army didn't need him to function. He would do good here, would do better here, helping as best he could, his mangled leg the excuse he had always needed to sit out the rest of the war. 

Maelice brought him soup later, when he had bathed and dressed for bed, in defiance of Dana's mandate that he eat in the dining room. She sat on a stool and watched him eat.

"I believe you want to protect us," she said. "Your heart is good."

His breath caught; he nearly spilled his spoonful of broth back into the bowl. He couldn't recall his parents ever saying anything like that. They had never been a warm family. Someone believed he was good. 

"Thank you," he said.

"There are things beyond our control," Maelice said, "but I know you'll do what's right." Her voice rang with a gentle certainty; it was a vow and a caution.

"I will," he promised.


	4. Chapter 4

He got up the next morning and hobbled to the kitchen, where Marguerite fed him porridge. "We nearly always have a few guests," she told him, "and the villagers like to come for lunch. There is always work to do." 

He had been dimly aware that there were others in the inn, aside from the Scullys, who seemed to live in a small house built onto the main building behind the kitchen. Monique lived in the inn, as far as he could tell; he heard her sometimes in the middle of the night, settling arguments or quieting concerns. They were all busy from dawn to dusk and beyond. He had not lightened that load, with his many needs and his helplessness. 

"I will help as much as I can," he said, and she nodded approvingly. Maelice brought him potatoes and carrots to peel. He stretched out his leg under the table and made a game of it, trying to get the longest curls of peel. Émilie had come into the kitchen and she watched him solemnly. Her hair was braided around her head. He wondered if Dana had done it, with the same hands that had cut into his leg, or whether Marguerite or Maelice or Monique had sat the child down and brushed her hair smooth. He had done the same with Sanne, years ago, before she'd learned to do it herself. He still remembered the twists and turns of it, his fingers clumsy at first and then nimble as his mother patted his shoulder stiffly and thanked him a rusty voice, drifting through the room on her way to somewhere else, leaving the scent of smoke behind her.

He was tenant in a house full of women who had little use for him; he was grateful that they let him do some work, as much as he was fit for anymore. He had a sense that Émilie knew it too, how little value he brought with him. But he had grown up caring for Sanne, and he knew a thing or two about entertaining children. He carved a face into one of the potatoes and handed it to her. She looked at him and giggled and scampered into the other room to play. 

Maelice, crushing garlic with a knife, smiled at him. "She'll adore you now."

"I have a sister," he said, and wondered if he ought to use the past tense, and then hated himself for the thought. "We had to entertain ourselves."

"You've done well," she said. "We don't have much time to play these days. It's nice for her to have something of her own."

They worked in comfortable silence. Mulder diced the potatoes and sliced the carrots. Maelice gathered them all and rinsed them while the garlic sizzled in the pot with onions and a bit of lard. When she tipped the vegetables in, they sizzled and sent up steam that made tendrils of hair curl around her forehead. She brushed them back.

"Now what?" he asked.

She smiled. "Now we wait. It's the most important part of cooking."

She poured out glasses of cider for each of them. He tasted it tentatively. It wasn't as strong or as sweet as the chouchen. It fizzed on his tongue, the flavor of autumn orchards and wet leaves. He swallowed it and Maelice smiled again. 

"The cider of Bretagne is famous," she said. "Another thing we fear to lose if your compatriots gain control of our land."

"They're not my compatriots," he told her. 

"Your uniform said otherwise," Maelice said. "Or else I imagine the price of impersonating a German officer is death?"

"I am an officer," he said, "but I'm not German, and I'm certainly not a Nazi."

"Oh?" Maelice said, the lift of her eyebrow offering an opportunity to explain, but just then Dana walked into the kitchen.

"And which one of you created Monsieur Patatez?" she asked. "Émilie will coddle it until it's a shriveled husk, I swear."

Maelice pointed at Mulder, who held up his hands in surrender. 

Dana crooked her eyebrow up in unknowing imitation of her sister. "I should have suspected." She sat down next to him. "Newly healed and already creating chaos among us."

Maelice laughed. "We won't be divided by any man," she said. 

"No," Dana agreed. "We won't." She looked at Mulder, who pushed the potato peels into a heap. "It might be best if you keep to the kitchen for a while. The old men yesterday were asking questions."

"They are true Bretons," Maelice murmured, something unidentifiable in her voice.

"Hush," Dana said, but it didn't sound as if she disagreed. "I told them you were a cousin of Monique's, sent here to recover from your wounds, but they won't accept that forever. Better if it looks like we're putting you to work."

"A cousin of mine?" Monique asked, coming in from the yard with a bucket of milk in each hand. "Well, at least we've both got dark hair." She set the buckets on the counter. "That's the cow's," she said, touching the right hand bucket. "And that's the goats'." 

Dana dusted her hands on her skirt and stood up, offering Mulder a hand. "Come on. I'll teach you how to make chèvre." 

He followed her to the stove, where she taught him how to pour the goat milk into the pot and heat it not quite to the boil, how to add lemon, how to chop and add the herbs. The steam curled the wisps of her hair just like Maelice's. He looked at her through the slightly sour clouds of vapor and something inside him softened. Her lips curled up at the edges, just slightly, and he softened again. There was a family here, and he was in some way a part of it, however they held him at arm's length. He understood. He deserved to be no closer. He was grateful for any in they gave him. He hefted the pot and helped her strain the cheese through cloth. Together they were making something better, even if it was just cheese out of milk. 

The hot curds cooled in their hammock of cheesecloth. Dana twisted the cloth until the whey ran out. She added salt, herbs, and a little garlic, and then rewrapped it and set it between two stone cutting boards with a heavy pan on top to squeeze out the rest of the whey. 

"There," she said. "That will be lovely on toast later."

It was such a peace-time thing to say. He could only look at her for a moment, her face flushed and lovely from the steam. The curve of her smile turned wry. 

"Even I can't fight every moment, Capitaine Reynard," she said. "Thank you for the potato. Émilie likes it very much."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Maelice smile and Monique shake her head fondly. 

"You're welcome," he said.

They had goat cheese on toast with the stew for dinner, all of them sitting together at one of the tables in the kitchen. It was, indeed, delicious. Émilie held tightly to Monsieur Patatez with one hand as she pushed cheese into her mouth with the other.

"Say thank you for the potato, Émilie," Dana said, that same wry tone in her voice.

"Trugarez," Émilie said through a mouthful of toast, and then hopped down and ran off on her own mysterious errands. 

"You'll learn Breton trying to talk to her," Monique said. 

"As you should," Maelice said. "Breton is a beautiful language, full of mysticism."

"Breton is a beautiful language which no one will use in a few decades," Dana said.

"I have an optimist and a skeptic," Marguerite said fondly to Mulder, "and an adopted daughter somewhere between." She patted Monique's hand. Monique squeezed Marguerite's hand.

"And what language will you share with us?" Monique asked. "Your native language is certainly not French."

Mulder shook his head. "It certainly isn't. I can teach you Dutch in return for Breton."

"Dutch?" Monique's gaze sharpened.

Dana got up from the table. "Unravel his mysteries later, Monique," she said. "It's getting late."

"Oh, I will," Monique said, and winked. Marguerite laughed. Dana rolled her eyes. 

He slept peacefully that night, and rose early. Cooking and cleaning were worthier employments than war, even such work on the outskirts of war as he had been doing.

He worked in the kitchen every day, stirring stews, mixing batter for galettes, chopping and peeling whatever needed to be chopped and peeled. He paced around the kitchen, back and forth. His leg still ached, but he could feel himself getting stronger. Dana watched him walk and pronounced him firmly in recovery.

"I'm afraid you'll always need the cane," she said. "But keep up the walking and you will get stronger."

"I will," he said. 

"It shouldn't matter if you're seen now," she told him. "The villagers found it easy enough to accept that Monique would have a cousin come here. They are skeptical of the city, you see."

"What did you mean when you said the men in the dining room were true Bretons?" he asked. 

"Surely you know about the Breton nationalists," Dana said.

He shrugged. "However ironic it may seem, I'm not very well-informed when it comes to politics. Monique said a little, and you mentioned something the other day, but I imagined they were collaborators. That doesn't seem exactly right."

She sighed. "There are those who support an independent Bretagne, free from French rule. They are willing to go so far as to collaborate, even independently of Vichy if they must, because they believe that the Germans will aid them if they support the Reich. You are correct to say that they are not exactly collaborators. They have their own ends, beyond just saving their skins. They imagine a Bretagne free of French influence, whatever that might look like. They have taken the triskèle as their symbol, and they have let the Germans dictate to them." 

"But the Germans have attacked Bretagne, haven't they?" he asked.

Her gaze made it clear she thought he wasn't much of a soldier, and privately, he agreed. "There was the bombardment of Rennes in 1940. There have been others. That might have changed minds. However, the Allies have not done much to hold onto this place, either with military or philosophical might."

He nodded. "And you? You aren't Breton?"

She lifted one shoulder. "We are Breton, certainly. This very inn used to bear the triskèle. We value our heritage. But we are French. Les Gaulois were not limited to this peninsula. We may be closer here to our Celtic roots and the holy places of our ancestors than the Provençals or the Bourguignons, but we don't believe that the price the Breton nationalists are willing to pay will buy the future they dream of, or redeem the past they have imagined."

"I see," he said.

"My family is passionate about the military," she said. "I grew up understanding the importance of loyalty. We sing La Marseillaise, we celebrate le Jour de la Bastille." She moved to the stove to stir the stew. "Every region has its own history. To imagine that we are the only exceptional ones does a disservice to the rest of our countrymen. If my father and my brothers can't trust the men beside them because they're from Aquitaine or Pas-de-Calais, what's the use?"

He thought of his father and his father's colleagues, a strange and shadowy collection of men from different origins, with their strange and shadowy goals, united by something other than homeland or patriotism.

"I understand," he said.

"We are beset from all sides," she said, and oddly, smiled. 

"You're happy about this?" he asked.

"My father would say that when we stand in opposition to those who would overpower us, we discover who we are," she said. "Our strength hasn't failed us yet."

"If all the French are as strong as you, I have no doubt you will free yourselves from the Reich," he said.

"Shall we turn you out?" she teased. 

"Mercy," he pretended to beg, as if the pang in his heart weren't real. 

"Maelice and my mother have soft hearts," she told him. "And Émilie would scream if I told her I was sending away the artist of Monsieur Patatez." 

"So I'm safe for now," he said.

"For now," she agreed. "As long as there are potatoes."

"I'll make sure your garden thrives," he promised.

"It will be a long summer," she said. "Your talents might be better suited to other pursuits."

"If I can't kneel to weed the garden, perhaps I can muck out the stables," he offered. "That still serves to ensure there will be potatoes."

"Ah yes," she said. "Assuredly you know all there is to know about manure."

"Yes," he said solemnly. "I've spent my life up to my knees in it."

She laughed, and the bright merriment of the sound startled him. "We shall all be grateful for your expertise, Monsieur Capitaine," she said.

"I live to serve," he promised.


	5. Chapter 5

He graduated after a week or so to washing the dishes and wiping down the kitchen tables, although he still had to sit sometimes. He liked it best when they were all in the kitchen together after dinner. Émilie had usually been put to bed. Marguerite relaxed with a glass of chouchen while the rest of them prepared for the next day. The clientele of the White Whale had been reduced by the war, but there were still regulars, and some still traveled the roads. They'd had all kinds of soldiers, Marguerite said, all the better reason to have changed the name of the place. These were fraught times; they couldn't afford to lose business over partisan concerns.

"If I'm a cousin, I should know more about the area," he said, up to his wrists in soapy water. "Even as the cousin of a Parisienne. Any local legends?"

"They say the ghosts of King Arthur and his knights roam the woods," Monique said, scrubbing one of the tables. "He was king of the Britons once upon a time, and it was a golden age of peace and wisdom. His knights were the finest in the land, and they fought against the forces of darkness and brought prosperity to all, as far as that went in the feudal system. Now they haunt the quiet groves of Bretagne, or so the stories go, ready to take up arms again against whatever endangers this place."

"Really?" Mulder asked, fascinated. He picked up another plate to wash it. 

Dana snorted. "They do say that," she conceded, drying a few glasses, "Especially the old-timers. But they also say that rubbing garlic on a wart will cure it, or that the moon can change a man into a wolf."

Mulder and Monique exchanged glances. She gave him a tiny nod and went back to scrubbing. 

"Arthur and his knights only appear before a battle," Marguerite corrected. "They were seen before the Great War, and again a few years ago."

"Mother, you don't believe in these things," Dana chided. 

"It's a wild strange world we live in, my little mouse," Marguerite said with a smile, and Mulder saw a hint of the girl Dana must have been in the gentle expression that crossed her face. 

"I love a good ghost story," Mulder said, letting hope tinge his voice.

"See, he really is my cousin," Monique said. "We're both tall, we both have dark hair, we both have strange accents, we both love ghost stories."

"There are no ghosts," Dana said firmly. "I swear Émilie has less stomach for these stories than you do." 

Maelice was counting the bottles of cider. "There's an energy here. Surely you can sense that, Dana."

"I can sense that there's a lot to do before any of us gets to go to bed," Dana said stubbornly. "And I can sense that morning always comes earlier than I'd like it to."

"There's no harm in a story," Marguerite said. "They say that the ghosts ride at the edge of the woods on the eve of great battles, to warn the village. They say that the brave and the pure of heart can see them."

"People have lived here for thousands of years," Maelice said. "There are druidic menhirs all over Bretagne. Why not Merlin? Why not Arthur?"

"Arthur is a story," Dana said. Her eyes flickered to Mulder for support, but he shrugged. She rolled her eyes and took out a bowl, measuring flour and salt into it.

"Lots of things that people believe in are stories," Monique said, warmth in her voice. "Glory. Victory. Royalty. All of it."

"Believe what you want," Dana said with a sigh. She turned the dough she was making out on the clean floured table. "I believe in bread. I believe in Mass on Sunday. I don't believe in ghosts."

"I'll help you with the bread," Marguerite said. "Kneading eases my arthritis." She nudged up next to Dana and they worked on the dough together. 

"They appear before a battle?" Mulder asked, looking at Monique.

"Only a great battle," Monique said, clearly enjoying herself as Dana ignored them. "A battle between good and evil that might change the world."

"Are they solid? Are they spirits? Are they forms of light?" Mulder asked.

Monique laughed. "You do love ghost stories."

"My sister loves them," he said, a pang of missing her shooting through him. "She always insisted that I read them to her."

"And now you have an encyclopedia of ghosts in your brain," Monique said.

"Ghosts, spirits, monsters of all sorts," he said. "Anything that goes bump in the night, Sanne delights in."

"I like to think they're forms of light," Maelice said thoughtfully. "Shining like stars to show us the way."

"That's enough," Dana said, and there was a strange firmness to her tone. The others quieted. Mulder glanced between them.

"Did you hear what old Jean said?" Marguerite asked as she continued to knead the bread, and everyone relaxed as she relayed the gossip one of the regulars had been spreading. 

The Arthur story wound itself deeper into Mulder's brain as he worked on the dishes, leaving them to dry on a towel at the side. He vaguely remembered reading the stories in his childhood. Sanne's interests tended towards the occult; she had read to pieces all the books of legends he'd gotten as a child. He wished he remembered more now than a handful of names and an ache in his heart for a true chivalry, a selfless devotion to a worthy higher cause. Once upon a time, his whispered, in a golden age, there was a king more noble than any other, and his knights were brave and true and wise and kind. He wished that were true. He had encountered few soldiers who fit the qualifications for the Round Table. The causes espoused by the commanders of the German Army were reprehensible; the ideas of the Allies might be nobler, but the methods of war were cruel no matter what philosophies underpinned them. Perhaps the Knights of the Round Table had struggled with the same dilemmas. 

The bread dough set to rise and the dishes done, they all said good night and went to bed. Mulder tapped his way down the hall and changed his clothes, but after he'd found his pyjamas, his stomach growled. He remembered the leftover soup in the small refrigerator and made his way back to the kitchen. The electricity was sometimes unreliable, but the service hadn't been entirely cut off. He heated the soup in a small pot and sat at the table he had wiped down earlier. It was peaceful in the kitchen, the presence of the women of the house almost palpable. As he was eating, he heard someone in the cellar, climbing the stairs. The door pushed partway open and then stopped. 

"Why did you say anything?" It was Dana's voice, sharper than usual.

"He can help us," Monique said, in a tone designed to soothe that clearly wasn't working. 

Dana laughed bitterly. "In what way can he help us?"

"Even his presence will make people look the other way," Monique said. "We shelter him openly. Whether he's my cousin or a Nazi soldier, they will assume we have little to hide. A houseful of women looks innocent."

"There are no innocents," Dana said. "Not anymore. Not since the Great War. And we all hear the whispers of worse atrocities."

"Which is why you and I do what we do," Monique said. "However small our impact."

"You and I and the rest of the hens," Dana said, sarcasm thick in her voice. "Just waiting for the men to return, no one to crow an alarm."

"Not everything is so straightforward, Dana," Monique said. "Sometimes we must let people believe what they want to believe."

"I hope you're right," Dana said. 

Mulder stood and moved as quietly as he could, holding his bowl as if he were just coming back into the kitchen, and then he coughed. Dana and Monique fell silent, and the cellar door opened all the way.

"Good evening," Dana said, her posture rigid and formal. 

"Oh, good evening," Mulder said. "I didn't think anyone was awake. I got hungry."

"Working will do that," Monique said, pressed close behind Dana in the doorway. "Did you find what you needed?"

"Yes," Mulder said. "Next time I won't take it to my room, though. The cane and the bowl don't work well together. I thought I would bring my bowl back and wash it. No one needs extra dishes to do."

Dana relaxed a small amount. "I appreciate that, although it's yourself you're saving from the effort later."

"I like to make the most of the moment," he said. "Good night, ladies."

"Good night," Dana said, and left abruptly. Monique lingered as he washed his bowl and the pan and set them out to dry. 

"Will you take me to the woods one day?" he asked. "I would like to watch for the lost king."

Her eyes appraised him. She nodded. "One day," she said. "They say too that only the worthy will see him."

"I try and fail and try again," he said. "Worthiness is a journey and a destination." He thought of his father, and of his father's work, and of his mother's bitterness. Sometimes it seemed as if there were a wasteland between him and the hopes he had of being better, kinder, stronger than the generations before him. He thought Monique understood that.

She nodded. "I'm going to have a cigarette before bed. Would you like to join me?"

Scent memory coiled lazily up from the packet she held out: his father's colleagues smoking, the one who used the cane always wreathed in vapor and reeking of tobacco.

"No, thank you," he said. 

"Suit yourself, cousin," she said. "Good night."

"Good night," he said, and made his way to bed to dream of heroes.


	6. Chapter 6

Life at the White Whale went on. Mulder knew the old men in the dining room had gotten used to the sight of him when they called him over and started to teach him curse words in Breton and tell him dirty jokes. Once in a while, on the rainy grey days, they would talk about their sons, gone to the war. He didn't think they trusted him, the supposed city cousin, and he could see that they knew his accent wasn't quite Parisian, but it still felt like a victory. 

One night, hobbling back from the bathroom, he caught a glimpse of lights at the edge of the forest. They flickered in and out behind branches, swinging around the height a rider might hold a lantern. He watched, fascinated, until they drifted out of sight behind the neighbors' barn.

"I saw the lights," he told Monique the next day as they ate baguette spread thickly with jam and butter. The Scullys all broke their fast together in the kitchen every morning, warming themselves by the fire as they prepared to cut vegetables and slice meat for the day's lunch.

"Did you?" she said. "Perhaps there's hope for you yet. We should prepare for whatever is coming, although if you didn't see Arthur himself, maybe it was a sign of something else."

"Perhaps there were fireflies," Dana said, a sour tone to her voice. 

"Oh, Dana," Monique said fondly. "Can't you let there be magic in the world?"

"Only when Émilie is around," Maelice said, rubbing Dana's back. "She's been that way since she was little. No fairy tales for our Dana."

"I see the world as it is," Dana said. "That's an asset more often than not."

"And you leave the once-upon-a-times to us," Maelice said, hugging Dana around the shoulders. "Together, we can handle any situation."

"On that we agree," Dana said, wrapping her arms over her sister's.

Mulder looked at them all and marveled that in the middle of a war, their family still loved each other so fiercely. His family tolerated each other in times of peace, but the moments of warmth were few and far between, some remnant of his parents' restrained upbringing or his father's work. They had been close for a few years after Sanne's birth, but as the work had grown more intense, the Mulders had grown more distant. Meanwhile, war seemed to have brought the Scullys closer together, at least those who were left at home. Maybe it was different with Gwilherm, Gwhil, and Charles around. He imagined the dynamic was skewed toward the authority of the military men. There was a photograph of the family in the hall; Gwilherm looked like a proud papa, but a stern one, and Gwhil looked as if he wanted to step directly into his father's shoes. Mulder wondered what the photographs of his family revealed. Surely their poses showed the tension between them. They had been happy once, but every year since his father had begun to work for the smoking man had stolen some of their warmth, until his parents barely spoke to each other and he and Sanne avoided them. He had the feeling that the Scullys liked him better at this point than his own family had when he'd left. 

He tried not to think too much about the days to come. He could walk again. He should have been grateful just for that. He couldn't run well, and he doubted he would ever be free of the limp, but he could walk without sharp pain. No one had come looking for him yet. He suspected no one would, unless the army happened to march through town. One man, in the scheme of things, didn't matter much. They would assume he'd been killed and send another scout. He had never fit in well with his unit anyway, and he certainly wouldn't now, with his permanent disability. 

He could run a few errands around town for Dana, and carry the basket of produce back from the market without overbalancing himself too much. He would never be fit for service again. There was a strange satisfaction in that. He wasn't a coward. He couldn't be a part of the German Army, and it wasn't his fault. He had heard of men shooting themselves in the foot before, or being purposefully careless around machinery, all to avoid service, but he had been shot, more or less in the line of duty. He hadn't given up. He was relieved of the burden of service and of the specter of cowardice. He would always need the cane, a visible proof of his sacrifice and his unfitness. His leg still gave out sometimes, without warning, or ached all the way through, or spasmed all at once as if his muscle were reliving the impact of the bullet. The weather affected it as well. He knew when a storm would blow in off the sea before even Marguerite did, and her years as a sailor's wife had taught her well despite their distance from the coast.

It was like a fairy tale in a way. He had gone on a quest (a dark and evil quest) as the oldest son of his house. He had been transformed. He had been rescued by a brave damsel. Outside the relative sanctuary of the village, a dragon coiled, breathing fire down the necks of the Allied powers. 

Despite the ache in his leg, he felt healthier here than he had in a long time. His family seemed to have drunk slow poison at some point in the past he couldn't pin down. He hadn't realized how much he had hated the uniform he'd worn until he'd taken it off. There were good German people. He knew that. But the uniform turned them all into something else, something dire and dangerous, a cancer on the world. As a Jewish man, however indifferent in his observations, he had felt some sort of subliminal sickness every time he'd put it on. His mother had been the one to remind him of holidays, to walk him through the rituals, and his attendance at temple had been sporadic, but that heritage was still a part of him. The prayers in Hebrew still rose to his lips from time to time. 

He wondered if Dana knew. She'd bathed him, when she'd sewn up his leg, so she probably suspected. He was relieved that she hadn't pressed him too much. He couldn't explain any of it to himself, except that he'd wanted to protect Sanne, and that hadn't mattered. Nothing he had done had mattered. 

At least going to the market and mucking out the stables gave him purpose. The days slipped by, one after the other. Émilie's Monsieur Patatez shriveled into a spongy horror, and he carved a second one so that she would let Dana put the first one in the scrap bucket. 

He saw the lights twice more at irregular intervals over the next few weeks. He didn't mention them to Dana again, but he was making a late-night snack one night when he heard noises in the cellar again. He had grown hungrier as he'd recovered and as he did more around the place. This time, Monique emerged alone. 

"Looking for knights?" he asked, slathering mustard on a cold galette and putting a few slices of ham on top. Émilie had demanded soup for dinner and he was benefiting now.

"In all the wrong places," she said. "As usual." She leaned against the door.

"You look like you haven't been sleeping well," he said.

"How kind of you, monsieur," she said sarcastically. 

"I'm not a fool, Monique," he said. "I know something's going on. The lights in the woods may not be Arthur and his knights, but something is happening."

She pressed her lips together in a thin line.

"I presume you can't tell me about it," Mulder continued, rolling up his crêpe. "But I know you want to. Otherwise you wouldn't keep letting me catch you."

"You see more than you let on," she said, crossing her arms. 

"Aren't we warned that loose lips sink ships?" he said. "It sounds much better in English, to be honest."

She sighed. "I do want to tell you. I have a feeling that you're trustworthy. But it's dangerous. There are more reasons not to tell you than to let you know." 

"My being an officer in Hitler's army not the least of them, I imagine," he said. 

"That's certainly part of it," she said. "Although I have a feeling you're not a true believer."

"Not a believer at all," he said. 

"Why do you wear the uniform at all?" she asked.

"It's complicated," he said. "I thought it would protect my family." 

"Did it?" she asked.

"No," he said, "but it was the best chance I had, in a handful of bad choices."

"I understand," she said, and he could tell by the strain around her eyes that she did. 

"I'm not trying to absolve myself," he said. "I'm sure something I did led to all of this happening in the first place."

"All of this?" she asked, with a little ironic gesture that included the war, the chaos, the misery, all of it. 

"All of my part in it," he said. "Maybe some of the rest."

"I wasn't aware we were harboring such an important man," she teased. 

"So important, no one minds if I disappear," he said.

"That does sound crucial," she told him. "I'm glad no one's come for you. You're better off with us."

"There's no doubt of that," he said. "I know it's a risk for all of you."

"Everything is a risk," she said. "Dana made up her mind about you and that was that."

"It would have been easier if you'd let me die," he said.

"Of course," Monique agreed. "But as I said, Dana made up her mind. None of us could change that even if we wanted to."

"I would help more if I could," he said.

"I'll remember that," she promised, and yawned extravagantly. "I'm off to bed." 

"Good night," he said.

"Good night," she said. "Another time, I'll tell you a bedtime story."

"I look forward to it," he said, and ate his snack in the empty kitchen, purposefully not looking at the cellar door.


End file.
